I saw Sicko yesterday which is Michael Moore’s new documentary about health care in the United States. I thought the film made its point very well and Michael Moore is definitely a master of using irony and sarcasm to make powerful points.

Many accuse any public personality that uses irony, sarcasm, or humour to make their point as being unethical. I believe these persuasive techniques are completely valid and almost necessary in today’s world. The average consumer of information recieves more quantities of information than they can ever process or research the validity of. Much of this information comes from profit seeking organizations that are not completely aligned with our interests. You better believe that every company profiled in Michael Moore’s film has a very large team of professionals who’s job is to persuade the public in the exact opposite direction of what Michael Moore is preaching. The only difference is this type of persuasion gets nice shiny names like “public relations”, “marketing”, and “educating the public”.

In a way, irony, sarcasm, and humor are some of the most powerful persuasive tools of our day for individuals who do not have extensive resources. I’ve seen stand up comedians make some of the strongest statements about our society, going into subject areas that would be unacceptable in any other situation.

Reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Blink” recently really gave me great appreciation for the power of emotions and instant “gut” thinking. If you haven’t read the book, the basis is that our unconcious minds are able to process through extremely large sets of information to make snap judgements before our concious even has time to really think through the situation. This kind of thinking is viewed as unreliable and we often try to suppress it as unsound thinking. Emotions fall under this type of thinking, and are a manifestation of what our unconscious has processed. An example is the instant reaction you get from someone being insincere. You could not consciously explain exactly why someone seems to be lying, but your unconscious has picked up on various minutiae that sends off the insincerity warning flags.

Recently, it’s really come to my attention in multiple ways that I shield my emotional side, quite obviously, from others. For whatever reason in my life I’ve managed to try to tuck this area away and always resort to completely thinking through everything. But I’m realizing the negative impacts this has been having on myself and others. First of all, trying to hide emotions is always a pure path to disaster. I know everyone can see right through me, or at least tell I’m hiding something. I also just waste away overthinking and overanalyzing everything. Instead of just having a conversation, I actively think about what everything I say will make people think, and then wonder how they’ll respond, etc. I’ll get completely hung up on the smallest things.

I do feel like the things in the book and these thoughts on my own emotions are related. I need to stop getting hung up on perfectly crafting everything I throw out into the public space. I’ve been under the false impression that coming across as who I want to be is a matter of just thinking through everything I say with enough thoughtfulness and forethought. But that just leads me down the path of over-analysis, insincerity, and getting stressed the hell out about everything. The insight I got from Blink was that maybe the answer lies in the most natural, unconcious part of me. Simply letting snap emotional judgments be satisfactory and trusting their instincts.

I started to do that a bit today, just opening up and being Transparent. I haven’t felt that free in a while.